Miguel Andrade – From the viewer’s side

By Cristina BastosOn 21 May, 20182018 | From this SideComments Off on Miguel Andrade – From the viewer’s sideTags: tile

He has a discreet and peaceful appearance, but new students who meet him on Candidate Day easily treat him as “Professor,” since he has given up correcting them, as well as given up challenging the older students who call him “Tinoco.”

Miguel Tinoco Andrade is another element of our topic “on this side” and who works to try to provide students with better study conditions. Currently, at the Preventive Medicine and Public Health Institute, he manages the operation of several subject areas and many other tasks that Teachers delegate to him, including an important part of that Unit’s Registrar. But he also participates in other projects, from “Candidate Day” to very occasional situations like when he was invited on several occasions to be master of ceremonies on College Day.

Being a diplomat, he does not impose himself but smartly conveys life messages and beliefs. As an advocate of meritocracy, he also understands that we can all gain if we humanise institutions.

He is concerned with seeing the consecutive repetition of certain errors in the History of Mankind, and that not even the passing of time seems to bring solutions for bad social standards instead of wisdom, as “the relationship with others is presently becoming increasingly complicated, with the reduction of attention and practice of principles and values that are important for a good social coexistence.”

Those who don’t know his curriculum could easily mistake him for a military man, given his method and grooming, his discipline and rigour, but he denies me that possibility perhaps only because the military career would have probably prevented him from completing a degree, which he considered imperative for his intellectual growth.

His groomed appearance, clear glance and calm voice do not suggest that it is on weekends that he leaves the protocol comfort zone. He likes hiking, or mountain biking, from which he derives pleasure in contacting with nature, not to mention kayaking.

He thinks that if we notice the signs and warnings of circumstances or nature, we will know how we can guide or even safeguard ourselves, but we must pay attention to interpret such signs. And this applies be it in attention to the winds, currents or tides for the safety of ocean navigation, or interacting with a stranger even while driving, for example.

It was at the age of five that he memorised the first sentence, which he would apply for the rest of his life: “do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you.” He sometimes has to recall that sentence because basic and primary feelings betray those principles. “Sometimes in traffic, I have no pacifism. Once on the highway, I lost my temper because of a speeding car bothering me during an overtaking manoeuvre. After letting him pass, I did the same to him. The other driver was upset, but I learned a lesson from the incident, even because it could have gone very wrong since human beings can suddenly become animals gone out of control.”

Lesson well learnt because very soon after he was again troubled during an overtaking manoeuvre by an inadvertent driver: “I really wanted to react, but fortunately I controlled myself, because riding inside one of the vehicles of the group that overtook me was the President of the Republic (at the time Prof. Aníbal Cavaco Silva), who was precisely on his way to the funeral of his deceased father, so that excess could even be better understood from the perspective of the professional who was driving the vehicle.”

Travelling through time, it was twenty years ago that he had the professional experience that impresses him the most: Expo’98. “It was a fantastic environment because we worked enormously and spent many sleepless nights, but it was rewarding due to everything that we experienced in the workplace. People were judged by their merit, with such equity, that they were promoted if they really deserved it.” But it was perhaps an atypical case, in which Portugal possibly wanted to demonstrate that it was up to an international event like this, meeting deadlines and setting effective goals, assimilating and learning from other very different cultures. His training in International Relations fit like a glove to manage the various diplomacy issues he was subject to every day.

During a period in which he was unemployed, he responded to a tender for the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon, because he was convinced that if he was evaluated by his previous experience, it would not be difficult to be accepted for the position. He knew that, more than the job, he needed to fight against a professional inactivity that he hates and that undermined his self-esteem.

The popular proverb says, “good things come to those who wait.” When the long tender period ended and he was the selected candidate, he received another positive response, found it attractive, but chose the FMUL instead, following a principle of behaviour he keeps towards himself and towards others, since it had been the first positive response he had received after long months “crossing the wilderness,” and for that reason he believed that he owed his loyalty to the entity that had welcomed him in the first place.

Although today he is integrated in civil service and has a fixed working schedule, he doesn’t always have a scheduled time to leave, depending on the volume of work or on the imposing rhythm of the emergencies he receives, so he gives up his free time and stays “later, to try to ensure that things happen on schedule.”

Despite his inherent commitment, he speaks of the need for renewal in certain work teams, currently with an obvious shortage of employees, and ponders: “I hope that in the near future the Rectory will allow the Faculty to give the same job opportunity to new employees as it gave me in the past, endowing itself with the greatly longed-for manpower, the services currently with the greatest shortage of human resources, thus providing employment as well as relief in some work volume that occasionally accumulates in this or that department.”

Perhaps the lack of time for himself weighed heavily on one plate of the scale, particularly when he had to decide between continuing his participation in the numerous work groups in which he was included and the consequence of that extra dedication, upon the availability for his personal life. The decision wasn’t easy, forcing him to relinquish collaboration with several teams he was a part of with heart and soul, as was the case with his recent departure from the “Helping College” project.

In a different balance, between the heart and the method, he also speaks about the students who are the subject of his concerns and it’s to them that he dedicates his greatest commitment: “we must be facilitating agents, because the overload of effort and study which the Integrated Master in Medicine imposes is already demanding.” Still, he does not forget the institution that welcomed him when he states that “another great duty is to always look after the name of the Institution even if something doesn’t go so well. I prefer to work a few more hours, even if I can’t make up for them with well-deserved rest. I am aware that it is very important for the FMUL to be well positioned in the evaluations or in the image that it conveys to public opinion, which also implies offering a good-quality service, which, in the end, will also benefit all those who are part of it.”

Despite the care and affection he has for the students, he does not understand the way in which theoretical classes are undervalued today. “In compulsory attendance classes, students have to be present in two-thirds of them, otherwise they will not get enough attendance, but in those that are not of compulsory attendance there is sometimes such a reduced number of people present that one might even think that there was some confusion in the location of the class. If you ask me what the reason for this phenomenon is, the answers I have to give are very personal. I would say the first reason may be related to the coincidence of exams and evaluations that occur simultaneously with class times and this is particularly visible in the theoretical classes at the end of the Semester. Bringing students to optional classes, precisely when they are being required, that same week, for evaluations… is contributing to considerable abstention. This is an example of a logistic explanation, but others can be justified with other types of arguments, ranging from whether or not a teacher is appealing, how he communicates his knowledge or even how technological possibilities in accessing the information considered relevant for the evaluation of knowledge are leveraged.

But it should be noted that I notice tremendous differences in the behaviour of my generation of students when compared to the current ones. But not all is bad. If we had had the quick access to information we have today, my marks would certainly have been much higher and learning would have been easier. It is important to highlight the fantastic support provided by current libraries, as it wasn’t so long ago that, in order to find a document, it was necessary to look for it on index files, and only after consulting certain information could we decide whether we would requested it. It was then necessary to wait for that book to be available and only after we had it in our hand would we know whether it was really useful, even because we couldn’t keep that document for a long time. Look at the incredible work that our Library team does in the management and dissemination of information, despite the intrinsic technological evolution.”

Maybe we moved from the concept of fast food to a fast learning that provided so much ready-to-use material that has made students question things less.

Progress has positive and negative aspects. The tendinitis that bothers him today, because of spending too much time working with the computer, reminds him of the times when his ZX Spectrum was all the rage, but was no more than a leisure tool at the time.

His work station being located in a visible place, once one enters the Preventive Medicine and Public Health Institute, he believes that body language causes a good or bad impact on another. “All kinds of people come here, most of them by mistake because they are actually looking for services in the Hospital (Santa Maria is in a block of buildings in front) or the IMM (Molecular Medicine Institute), immediately showing us the medical exams or the requisitions, always with a request for help that we can’t refuse, despite the negative impact that these frequent interruptions have on our tasks. Attending these people and showing them the way is also a way of helping and learning how to communicate.”

Few things make him lose his temper, but intolerance and arrogance make him change his demeanour and colour. He considers that it is not the hierarchies or what the religions preach that really define who people are, but rather the behaviours that are intrinsic to them and that are manifested in the actions of everyday life. About the memories of his childhood, when chivalry stimulated giving one’s seat to a lady, he comments that we are increasingly living moments of apprehension and alertness, especially in times of crisis.

He regrets not always learning a lesson at first, and when he repeats a mistake he gets angry. “The mistake of not properly considering the degree of risk involved is what irritates me the most. It’s like when you know that you’re going to hurt yourself and yet you take the risk, hoping that this time things will go well.” Naiveté or perhaps stubbornness in thinking that one can and should change the course of the world, that is mainly what makes him repeat some mistakes that he anticipates may have some possibility of an undesired outcome.

A while back, he told me that “there is a big difference between just looking or being able to see.” Miguel sees. And that’s why he is so determined in wanting to change the course of things, because he knows that only then can something perhaps improve.